6 March 2013

♫ You take the high road and I'll take the low road ♫

As eager-beaver listeners cannot but have noticed, there was a certain gap in our routine For A' That podcasting last Sunday. Just a wee dab of damnum fatale. In compensation, we've two episodes of the show scheduled for this week, going back to our usual structure of one of Michael's Scottish independence podcasts appearing on Wednesday, and us, back to our usual Sunday spot.

Our guest today was Pat Kane, scribbler, chanteur, and currently a board member for Yes Scotland. Up for the blether this week, who are Britain's narrow nationalists now? Theresa May's human rights trolling, high roads, low roads, ambivalence and storytelling in the Scottish independence debate. Pat asks, is folk singer Karine Polwart right? Last month, she wrote:

"Let the Yes campaign be positive and hopeful, yes. But let’s allow it
to be, where it needs to be, angry and bold too, please. And let’s
harness more imagination to the urgent transformative telling of better
stories about how we want to live."

One year since it came into force, we also had a wee chat about football, masculinity, sectarianism, and the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act. A brave public health measure, exorcising the country's sectarian ghosts, or an instrument which has empowered the police to treat fans in heavy-handed ways? A way of addressing Scottish cultures of toxic masculinity, or a threat to basic rights and freedom of speech?

To tuck away the show for later consumption, you can download it from Spreaker, or from iTunes. Alternatively, you can listen to our discussion with Pat right away, right here. We'll be back, as usual, on Sunday afternoon.

“I think of him more of a long nosed, elegantly coiffed Afghan pawing through his leather bound library whilst disdainfully inhaling a puddle of Armagnac in an immense crystal snifter. If he can also lift his leg over his shoulder and lick his balls...” ~ Conan the Librarian™

“... the erudite and loquacious Peat Worrier who never knowingly avoids a prolix circumlocution.” ~Love and Garbage

“My initial mind picture was of a scanty bikini'd individual wallowing in a bath tub of peat. However I've since learned to warm to him, and like peat he's slow to draw but quick to heat...” ~Crinkly & Ragged Arsed Philosophers

Definition: "to worry peat" v.

"Peat worrying" is the little known or understood process for the extraction of cultural peat, practised primarily in the Lowlands of Scotland by aspirant urban rustics. Primary implements by means of which successful "worrying" is achieved include the traditional oxter-flaughter but also the sharp-edged kailyard and the innovative skirlie stramasher.